Wow! I am just blown away by the idea that a camera phone can compete with a high-quality compact camera like the S95. Amazing craftsmanship and engineering in the iPhone 4S.

look carefully

The first two pictures appear to be a matter of 'macro' focus (the wall is in focus in the early iphone) which in traditional cameras was a specialty feature with specific lenses - perhaps a feature rather than quality comparison?

The second compares what seems a wider lens (intrinsically sharper & better depth of field) in potentially different (clouds) lighting conditions...?

Presumably the new camera is better, however comparisons may need careful scrutiny...

let us examine

let us examine the camera you can afford by not having an iPhone 4S for two years.(Arrgh!). First, $399. You will obtain a macro lens. Second, the camera. Since I cannot buy a 4S today, let us compare with a camera which I also cannot buy, the Sony NEX7N at $1199. The readout is about the same pixellation as the retina display, but is OLED. At 24 megapixels I think we can safely say you are going to get better enlargements with the camera than with the phone. On the other side of the ledger, you cannot make calls with the camera .... yet! Decisions decisions.

Iffy pictures

The jewellery pictures are not a fair comparison since the major difference is one of focus, not sharpness as bobolicious pointed out. This has occurred because the iPhone was tilted more towards the ceiling in the first picture, while the second with the 4S has the table edge running exactly through the middle of the pic, thus giving the autofocus a better chance of taking an in-focus pic.

The cityscape shots are a better comparison because it is likely that the lens would be focussed at infinity for both pictures and what we are seeing is a real comparison of lens sharpness. Lens quality is more important than the number of megapixels. Plus, the sensor size is also far more important than number of megapixels. I understand both the lens and the sensor size improved with the new camera, but clearly won't be very big in a phone cam: I'll take my 6 Mp Nikon D40 SLR over the 8 Mp iPhone 4S every time for image quality due to the much larger sensor. Any claims or headlines about the iPhone camera taking on proper SLR cameras is just sales hype. Being better than other phone cams probably isn't though.

macro shot, that's her point

The point of the macro shot was to show how much better the camera is at taking this type of photograph. It is a very good close-up shot, something I have a hard time doing with any camera I own. I don't see the photos the same way SwissMac does, the out of focus shot should have been able to focus on the top edge if it could but it couldn't so it focused on what it could. If Lisa moved the iPhone back a bit until it finally focused, we could see how close the older iPhone could get, which I still believe is much further away from the subject than the new iPhone.

not quite

The top photo (in each set) was shot with a 2007 iPhone - that iPhone doesn't have auto-focus at all. It has nothing to do with the angle of the shot.